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Letters to the editor that didn’t get published XVI

You state (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/05/donald-trump-rare-earths-ukraine-us-trade-deal-aid-russia) that the rare earths are “a group of 17 heavy metals”. One of them, scandium, is element 21, with an atomic weight of 45 -ish. It is therefore rather light as metals go. As the man who spent a decade running the shadowy international scandium oligopoly (no, really) I welcome this opportunity to be a pedant. Or as your correspondent Ms. Toynbee once described me in your pages, a “pendant”.

Yours etc

Yes, liked it, but not quite enough. They have, instead, just corrected the article.

Darn.

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